DailyTech will be covering IDF extensively
this year. There will also be occasional updates available via
Twitter.

The
world's largest semiconductor company is eager to discuss the launch
of new CPUs using their 32nm process. One of Intel's key strengths
has always been manufacturing, giving them the ability to
propagate Moore's Law.

DailyTech has been told
that production
of 32nm Westmere chips has already started in preparation
for the upcoming product launch. Using their second generation high-k
metal gate transistor technology, Intel expects to move the bulk of
their CPU production to the P1268 process next year.

Most of
the first Westmere
chips will feature a 32nm dual-core CPU and a 45nm GPU integrated on the same package. Intel plans to introduce a six-core
Westmere chip codenamed Gulftown early next year,
but the company has decided against any new quad-cores
until the introduction of the Sandy Bridge architecture next
year.

AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions) will be a big part of
Sandy Bridge. It is a 256-bit instruction set extension to SSE
and was designed especially for applications that are floating
point intensive. The enhancements in AVX will allow for improved
performance due to wider vectors, new extensible syntax, and rich
functionality including the ability to better manage, rearrange and
sort data. Intel first announced AVX at the Spring Intel Developer
Forum in April 2008, and it will eventually make its way into most of
Intel's platforms.

Intel has also certified the new P1269
System-On-Chip process. The company claims it will be able to create
ultra low power transistors for low standby/always-on circuit
applications and high voltage I/O transistors. This process also
includes new high-precision and high-quality passive components
specifically needed for SoCs, such as resistors, capacitors and
inductors.

DisplayPort hasn't been adopted as quickly as expected, but that
is expected to soon change. Intel is planning to put DP into a large
number of future chipsets. The monitor manufacturers that DailyTech
spoke with indicated that the lack of video card and motherboard
support for DP was the primary reason they haven't introduced many
DisplayPort products.

The UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is an effort
by many companies in the PC industry to modernize the boot
process. The interface consists of data tables that contain
platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls
that are available to the operating system and its loader. Some UEFI
capable systems are already shipping, and PC firms want to make
a rapid shift to the new system. Most platform firmware will
continue to support legacy BIOS booting during the transition period
to UEFI.

We will also receive briefings and updates on
chipsets supporting
SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, ACPI 4.0, and PCIe 3.0.

Intel will
also show off Whisper, which allows a user to set their noise
tolerance. The CPU will down-clock itself automatically to reduce fan
speed. This will be particularly useful for those wishing to build
Home Theater PCs.

It isn't just Intel at IDF though. There are
dozens of companies here eager to show off their own technologies.
Some are familiar names, like Lenovo, Microsoft, and Cisco.
Others are just hoping to get their big break.

Intel's
President Paul Otellini starts off the day with a keynote speech on
"Building a Continuum of Computing", but the speech by
Intel Architecture Group EVP Sean Maloney will be the one that we're
excited about. The first day of IDF ends with a concert by
Maroon 5.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

The only use I could think(for me) for the on-die GPU is HTPC use. Just wondering how it will manage with all the decoding and stuff. Anyways it would remove one part from the HTPC setup and maybe even make passive cooling easier (if the cpu is cool enough).